The Americans Are Coming Read online

  In a box in the corner he kept his traps, a revolver, ammunition and his trumpet.

  There was no window in the camp, so that when he entered he either had to leave the door open so he could see, or light the lamp that sat on the table. Lit, the lamp was usually turned as low as Lindon Tucker’s.

  By the light of one tiny star, which shone through the open door, Nutbeam found his trumpet.

  He took the trumpet outside, put it to his lips, pointed the horn at the star-spangled sky and blew.

  HONK, HONK, BEEP, BEEP, BARMP-BARMP!

  The sound of the trumpet echoed from hill to hill, crossed brooks and rivers and shot through windows and doors all over Brennen Siding. Nutbeam played what he hoped sounded like “There’s a Mansion in the Blue” for several minutes.

  Then the rifle shot went off, the retort slamming against his big floppy ear, startling him into a sudden, silent trance just a hair short of death.

  Darkness reigned supreme.

  *

  Shadrack and Dryfly stood on the steps that scaled the east end abutment of the bridge, panting heavily from running all the way from the forest to the river. Shadrack was particularly tired from carrying the heavy .303 rifle. Both boys were very happy to see the lit windows of the little settlement. The sight of the river, calm, reflecting the starlit sky, restored their courage. The river, a symbol of home, strength and identity, would give them courage for the rest of their lives. At the age of eleven, they already loved it.

  During their lives, Shadrack and Dryfly would travel to Vancouver and New York, Toronto and Nashville, England and Italy, but their hearts would always remain on the Dungarvon, the Renous and the Miramichi. At the age of seventy, they would still at times speak a little too fast and at other times a little too slow and would repeat the word “and” too much. At the age of seventy, they would still speak with a Miramichi accent, softly, as the river people do, and refer to themselves as “Dungarvon boys.”

  “You gonna be able to go home by yourself, Dry?” asked Shadrack.

  “Yeah, I’ll be all right.”

  “I have to sneak the rifle and flashlight back in. If I git caught doin’ it, I’ll be killed.”

  “What d’ya s’pose happened to the whooper thing?”

  “Must’ve scared ’im, that’s all.”

  “Me and you scared the whooper, Shad!”

  “Yeah, I know. Can’t be nothin’ too dangerous if me and you scared it.”

  “We gonna tell what we did?”

  “What d’ya think?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “What d’ya think it was, Dry?”

  “I don’t know. Panther, I guess.”

  “Well, we kin talk about it tomorrow. I gotta git home and try and git this rifle in the house without getting caught.”

  “Okay. See ya later, Shad.”

  “Yeah. Night.”

  The boys separated.

  Dryfly’s fear might have climaxed back in the woods, but its memory still shook him from within. What was more, he was still out in the dark night and now he was alone. The boardwalk of the footbridge ribboned before him; the river swept below, another ribbon with its reflections of forest and sky.

  Reasoning told him not to be afraid of the bridge. “It’ll hold the devil,” everyone always said, and he was accustomed to its bounce and squeaks; he’d walked it many times. But in the daylight . . . always in the daylight.

  When he reached the middle abutment, it loomed dark and menacing beneath. He quickened his pace and hurried by.

  “I wished I was more like Palidin,” thought Dryfly. “Pal’s always out in the night. Ain’t scared a bit.”

  “How can Palidin do it? How kin he not be scared?”

  “Scared?”

  “Of what?”

  “The dark?”

  “A ghost?”

  Dryfly didn’t know why he, himself, was afraid. “Other people crossed the bridge and nothin’ happened to them,” he reasoned. “Why should anything happen to me?”

  When he reached the west end abutment, he realized he was confronted with a decision. “Cross the fields to the road, or go down along the shore to Stan Tuney’s brook and go up through the woods.” He knew the path along the brook better, but the thought of walking through the woods did not appeal to him. He dismounted the abutment and headed across Dan Brennen’s field, past the house, barn and sheds. He came to the road. “I made it to the road,” he whispered, and headed north toward home. He passed Billy Campbell’s farm and Bernie Hanley’s store. He was nearing the railroad crossing when the bird sang – the same bird he’d heard in the woods.

  Dryfly’s heart leaped and began to drum in his chest. The hairs on his neck and back lifted, feeling like a chill. “I’m gettin’ outta here!” he gasped and ran as fast as he could all the way home.

  It would be many years before he’d be man enough to admit that he’d been so afraid of a bird.

  *

  Shadrack climbed the hill toward home. His shoulder was sore from shooting the rifle, but he was not afraid of the devil himself. Shadrack had the rifle.

  Outside the house, he peeked in through the window. His father sat in the kitchen, reading the Family Herald. That was a good place for him.

  His mother was reading the Bible. Good enough, too.

  “I’ll sneak through the front door,” thought Shadrack. “I’ll have to be quiet, though.”

  Shadrack was just putting the rifle behind the chair, when his father yelled, “Where you been with that rifle?”

  Bob Nash was standing in the livingroom door, slapping the palm of his hand with a tightly-rolled Family Herald.

  Shad turned to face his father, knowing there was no escape, that a severe application of the tightly rolled Family Herald was about to occur.

  “I shot the Todder Brook Whooper,” said Shad, quickly.

  “You what?”

  “I shot the Todder Brook Whooper!”

  “WHAT! What did I hear you say?”

  Bob Nash had already decided upon his course of action and hit Shadrack, hard as he could, on the butt, with the tightly rolled Family Herald.

  “Don’t, Dad!” yelled Shadrack.

  “Don’t ‘don’t’ me!”

  Whack! went the Family Herald.

  “Take my rifle, will ya!” Whack! “Young lad like you!” Whack!

  “OUCH! That hurts! Ouch! Stop!”

  Bob Nash had a terrible temper. Bob Nash had fire in his eyes. Bob Nash’s fiery eyes could almost see the Family Herald’s John Deere Tractor ad imprinted on Shadrack’s behind.

  WHACK! went the Family Herald. WHACK, WHACK, WHACK . . .

  Monday night in Bernie Hanley’s store, Bob Nash took a drink of his Sussex Ginger Ale and said, “Yes sir, that boy of mine and that young Ramsey lad, Dryfly, took my rifle and went back in that woods alone, just the two of them, and scared that devil off. I haven’t heard it since, have you?”

  “No,” said Bert Todder, “didn’t make a peep last night, far’s I know.”

  “Heard the shot, so I did, yeah. Not a peep last night, no. Heard the shot, so I did,” said Lindon Tucker.

  “I wouldn’t even have the nerve to do that meself!” said Bob Nash, proudly.

  “Them boys got good stuff in them, I can say that,” said John Kaston.

  “Did they see it, Bob?” asked Bernie Hanley, from behind the counter.

  “Sure, they saw it! How would they fire at it if they didn’t see it! Shad said it was as big as a moose and had horns like a cow. Said he saw his eyes shining and they were as big around as saucers!”

  “I heard the shot, so I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did, yeah,” commented Lindon Tucker.

  “Gimme a new flashlight bulb, would ya, Bernie? And a bag of them peppermints fer me young lad.”

  five

  From the fifteenth of April to the fifteenth of October, Helen MacDonald cooked for the Cabbage Island Salmon Club. The job paid well. Helen was a good cook. Sh
e worked fourteen hours a day, seven days a week for thirty dollars. Occasionally, one of the club guests would tip her five or ten dollars. Helen MacDonald’s financial goal was to be able to afford an indoor toilet.

  In order to have breakfast ready for the early-rising anglers, Helen had to leave home at five o’clock in the morning. Rex, her old brown dog, always followed her to work. Rex was fed very well on the scraps left over from the Cabbage Island Salmon Club dinners.

  One hot July day in 1962, Helen MacDonald found herself in a bad mood. She had baked a blueberry pie and had left it in front of an open window to cool. An hour later she looked to see how the pie was doing, and to her amazement and great displeasure, the pie had vanished. She had paid little Joey Brennen fifty cents of her own hard-earned money for those berries, hoping to impress a tip from the Americans with a pie.

  It wasn’t the first time she had lost food from that window but it hadn’t happened since the previous year. Helen thought that maybe the thief had grown up and had developed some conscience. “It’s plain to see that Dryfly Ramsey ain’t ever growing up.”

  Dryfly Ramsey naturally got the blame. Dryfly Ramsey was a Catholic and, therefore, bad enough to do it. Besides, earlier, Helen had seen Dryfly snooping about the place. She should have known enough then to remove the pie from the window sill.

  That night, Helen related her frustration to Bert Todder.

  “I don’t know what I’m ever going to do! That tramp! If a poor woman can’t make a livin’ without the likes o’ that tramp botherin’ her, what’s the world comin’ to!”

  “Are you sure it was him?” asked Bert.

  Bert Todder was making his rounds. Whenever Bert made his rounds, he always made sure to visit Helen MacDonald. Helen MacDonald was an old maid, Bert was a bachelor. Although Helen liked Bert, sexually she wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. However, Bert thought there was always a chance. After all, he was male and she was female.

  “Course, I’m sure! Who else would do it?”

  “Did you ask anybody about it?”

  “I saw ’im snoopin’ around!”

  “Ya can’t leave stuff layin’ around where he is.”

  “If ya can’t leave a pie on a window sill without some no good tramp takin’ it right out from underneath your eyes, it’s gettin’ pretty damn bad, I’d say! If I get my hands on that . . . that tramp, I’m gonna strangle ’im! I’ll put him in his place, I tell ya!”

  “You need a good man, Helen dear.”

  “There ain’t no such thing as a good man, you old coot!” Bert squinted up his eyes and laughed. Helen eyed Bert’s lone tooth. “He sounds like he’s cryin’,” she thought.

  “Ya know what I’d do, Helen darlin’?”

  “What?”

  “Well, I gotta go, but I’ll tell ya. Must be gettin’ late, ain’t it? Anyway, what I’d do is, I’d make another pie and put Ex-Lax in it. Put it on the window sill just like ya did before. Let ’im eat that and see how he likes it. That’ll fix ’im!”

  “Ex-Lax,” thought Helen. “It’ll cost me fifty cents, but it would be worth it.”

  Helen was glad she had thought of it. She liked the idea very much. It would teach Dryfly Ramsey a lesson.

  *

  William Wallace tied on a Black Bear Hair with yellow hackle and green butt and picked up his eight-foot Orvis. The bamboo Orvis was the ultimate in fishing rods as far as William (Bill) Wallace was concerned. The Orvis had been a parting gift from the vice-president (Jimmy), the bastard who was after the presidency. Bill Wallace was the president of the company and had no intentions of stepping down.

  “Here’s a fishing rod for you,” Jimmy had said. “Why don’t you go fishing, get away for a while. I’ll look after things.”

  Bill Wallace didn’t know what Jimmy was up to, but Bill figured something was being schemed. Bill Wallace didn’t trust the vice-president as far as he could throw him.

  Bill accepted the rod and went fishing. He knew that something negative could happen, but he was not overly concerned. Bill Wallace had a fifty-million-dollar concept for Phase One of the new regional hospital that would leave Jimmy, the vice-president, gaping in awe. Bill Wallace was the president of a construction company, with a contract with the government of Massachusetts to build a hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar hospital in Pittsfield.

  Bill Wallace waded ankle-deep into the Dungarvon River and stopped to look around.

  “You have a beautiful rivah here, Lindon, ghosts or no ghosts. You say it was never heard after?”

  Lindon Tucker, the guide, was lying amidst the shore hay, fighting flies.

  “’Pon me soul, yeah,” said Lindon. “No one around here’s heard a peep since.”

  Bill looked at the river flowing peacefully by. He looked downstream to where the river bent and vanished behind a forested wall. He could see the hills, the fields, even the reflection of some houses on the mirror-like expanse before him. A swallow dipped and dashed, a salmon parr jumped, an unfamiliar bird could be heard scolding something, perhaps its mate, in a nearby spruce.

  “Are we going to catch a salmon today, Linny? Is there anything in heah’?”

  “Ya might, ya might, ya might. There ain’t no amount o’ fish, though.”

  “Well, I’ll give it a try. Christ, there’s got to be somethin’ in heah’.”

  Bill Wallace waded in to his knees, released ten feet of his pink air cel line and made a cast. He pulled another four feet from his Saint John Hardy and cast again. He could feel the pressure of the current against his legs, dry in the canvas-topped Hodgemen waders. He lengthened out a few more feet and made another cast. The Black Bear Hair with yellow hackle and green butt drifted past what Bill thought was a potential hotspot. Nothing. He moved downstream a few more steps and cast again.

  “I hope Lillian likes it up here,” he thought. “She’s been wanting to come with me ever since she wrote that essay on the Dungarvon Whooper.” Bill chuckled to himself, “The Dungarvon Whopper!”

  Bill kept stepping and casting, stepping and casting until he had covered the whole rocky area the locals referred to as a pool, reeled in his line and waded back to where Lindon lay. Lindon was nearly asleep in the morning sun.

  “Did the boys actually see the . . . the whooper?”

  “Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah, oh yeah, they seen it all right. Looked like a cow, yeah. Big as a moose, so it was, yeah. Took a shot at it, so they did. Heard the shot meself, so I did, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, heard it meself. .303. Never even slowed ’im down. Stopped him from screaming, though. Yes sir, never saw ’im after. Never peeped since!”

  “Where’s this young . . . what did you say his name was?”

  “Shad? Peelin’ pulp, I think. Back with John. Workin’ with John Kaston, yeah.”

  “And the other one?”

  “You’d prob’ly find Dryfly home. Home, yeah. Playin’ guiddar. All he does is play guiddar. Good at it, too, yeah. Another Hank Snow, that lad, yeah. Gonna give it another try?”

  “I think I’ll give it one more try, then head back to the club. What do you think, Linny?”

  Lindon yawned. He wanted a break from sleeping on the shore. The sun was too hot and the flies were bothering him. Lindon knew that there were very few, if any, salmon in the river and that Bill Wallace’s chances of catching one were close to nil.

  “Can’t ketch ’im wit a dry line,” said Lindon.

  Bill Wallace started the procedure again in much the same fashion. Bill knew that his chances were very poor, too. The weather was too hot for good, productive fishing. But Bill Wallace was standing in the cool water away from the flies. Bill Wallace liked being on the river and liked the scenery and the fresh air. He changed flies, went to the Squirrel Tail with yellow hackle he’d purchased from Bert Todder.

  “Bert Todder ties the best damn salmon fly in the world,” thought Bill. “So delicate, yet so strong and durable.”

  Bill took his eyes off the colourful little flyhook and
scanned the scenery again. “So scenic and peaceful,” he thought.

  Across the river stood a massive log cabin, with two stone fireplaces, a breezeway between the kitchen and the living quarters, a full length veranda, shaded in a grove of pines.

  “Nice little place,” thought Bill. “Belongs to Sam Little. Sam’s a Yale man, I think. Out of Hartford. Made his money in the hotel business. He’s got the best salmon pool on the Dungarvon and I’m casting directly into it from Lindon Tucker’s shore. I wonder why he never bought Lindon Tucker out?”

  “Does Sam Little spend much time at his lodge?” asked Bill. “Too much, too much, too much. Like the, like the, like the feller says, too much.”

  “Did you ever guide for him?”

  “Yeah. Oh yeah. I guided the old sonuvawhore, so I did. Yeah, I guided him, all right. Guided him too much.”

  Bill Wallace waded deeper in the river, smiling to himself. “Lindon Tucker wouldn’t sell Sam Little anything,” thought Bill.

  *

  A freshly peeled stick of pulpwood is as slippery as a greased eel, or, in the words of Bert Todder, “slipperier than Shirley Ramsey’s slop pail dump.” Shirley Ramsey dumped her slop pail on the grass, ten feet east of the house, and on more than just a few occasions, while waiting for the mail, a man would go around the house to “see a man about a horse” and slip and fall on the accumulated grease. The only way to identify a slop pail dump is the longer grass that grows from its constantly enriched situation.

  The pulpwood stick slipped from Shadrack’s hands, taking a fair amount of the skin with it. Shadrack didn’t swear. He was too hot and sweaty and fly-bitten to swear. He was beyond swearing. He was speechless. He was fourteen and his mind was on more interesting things. If he’d been in a state to speak his mind, he’d have yelled, “That American girl at the Cabbage Island Salmon Club is the prettiest thing on Earth! I hate this jeezless job,” and “There’s gotta be a better way to make a livin’ than this.”